


superallergic

by wildmountainthyme



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Claustrophobia, Swearing, Violence, york is in this as a kid so. heads up if u don’t like kids in blaseball-typical horror situations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27476302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildmountainthyme/pseuds/wildmountainthyme
Summary: “The one thing she was certain of was that this was the doing of the Peanut. It was the obvious conclusion from everything she had seen, and so she assumed it was the truth, just to have something to know.”The major events of several seasons of blaseball through the perspective of Jessica Telephone. Shelling, Jaylen, shelling again, day X, with several conversations and other incidents inbetween.(shout out to kate @ fairchart for their jessica shelled pieces n that seb comic because they were what initially inspired this :] )
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	superallergic

**Author's Note:**

> man it would suck to be shelled twice in a row, i thought, and now i have 10k words to show for it. this is mostly just me taking the major characters i think are interesting and smacking them into jessica telephone B)
> 
> (to clarify a little my hcs are it/she for PM, they/she for jaylen)
> 
> the graphic violence is near the end starting w ‘he didn’t pause as he strode up’ and ending w ‘he walked back to the stands’. it is not super graphic but heads up regardless

Day 99, Season 6. 

The final game of the season won, Jessica Telephone hung up the Dial Tone on the receiver holster strapped to her hip, hearing the satisfying click of bat into holder. It was the welcome signifier that she could leave the bat in the holster and rest for a while. 

She had barely stepped off the field when, cutting through the noise of the fans and snapping her out of her anticipatory relaxation, it started to ring. She picked it up immediately, as she always did. Barely anyone called her on the Dial Tone. Barely anyone even had that number. ‘Hello?’ she half-shouted over the oblivious cheering from the stands, and pressed the speaker at a tilt to her hearing aid with a clack. Her brow furrowed as she strained to listen to the speaker on the other side of the call, until she hung up after a short minute with a second, sharper click of the bat into the holster. There was no rest in the sound this time. 

‘Jessica, slow your pace! Where are you headed at such speed when celebrations are in order?’ Lang Richardson called out to her, slowing her on her run through the changing rooms. She shook her head at him on her way past, and tapped the Dial Tone.

‘Commissioner called. Meeting for the idols, or something. I have to be there immediately, they said, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

‘We shall miss you, Jessica!’ 

‘I’ll be half an hour, max, Richardson,’ she yelled back at him over her shoulder, already through the door. She picked her pace back up to a run, winding out to the back corridors through to the busy car park. Her beeline to her own vehicle, (small, teal, well-stickered, comforting) was blocked by an imposing all-black car parked at the curb. She could have mistaken it for a Spies vehicle if not for the stand-out flashiness of the thing, and the vague man in a suit (rather than the Spies’ recognisably unrecognisable trench coat) that had the door already opened for her. She scrambled in, assuming (praying) this was what she was supposed to do, and sat back in the immaculate leather seat. She already regretted not having the time to change out of her sweaty, grass-stained gear. The car smelt new, and she felt overheated and out of place in a way she wasn’t used to.

The radio was already on as the car screeched out of the parking lot and sped down the road. It took her a moment to clock the voices rushing over the speakers, and when she did, she had no idea what they were talking about. She hadn’t listened to the radio herself in years, finding that it only wore her down, and so she was completely out of the loop on what these two were gabbing about. Something panicked about the red line, and the Garages (and/or the Moist Talkers) were trying something- something with Jaylen Hotdogfingers? And there was a mention of peanuts (three of them?)- and the brakes abruptly slammed on, and the torrent of radio chatter was snapped off.

She could’ve sworn they had only driven for five minutes, but wherever they pulled up to was nowhere she recognised. It was a nondescript office-looking building in the middle of a wide, grassy field, with a glass windowed lobby containing a small crowd of people. Curious, she stepped out of the car. The minute her foot hit the gravel, the vehicle sped off immediately, kicking up a cloud of dust that dulled her already dirty uniform as she walked up to the building.

The lobby held about 20 blaseball players, all familiar faces, in uniforms as sweaty and dusty as hers, looking out of place amongst the clean decor. They were split off and huddled in groups, and she could hear a hum of worried chatter underneath the heavy, quiet mood of the place. Swallowing back a rising feeling of dread, she slipped through the door, and immediately her eye was caught by a large TV screen on the wall, displaying the idol board she had been trying so hard to ignore. That red line underneath the top three names- underneath her name- was jumpy and staticky. Nagomi Mcdaniels, another name she knew well, was up there with her. Jessica found her in the lobby almost immediately, her slightly malformed, crabby silhouette eye-catching against the blank white walls. Beside her was York Silk, eight years old, and a quarter of Nagomi’s size. He was curled on the floor, leaning against Nagomi and stubbornly glued to his Nintendo DS. Jessica took a deep breath and approached them. ‘Nagomi. What’s going on?’

Nagomi shook her head. ‘Hi, Jess. No idea. There’s that’- she gestured with her stiff, carcegenizing arm to a large countdown clock on the wall opposite the television, with a minute and a half left on it- ‘though gods know what that means. The radio’s been talking about idolising the Peanuts’- a nod to a cluster of 3 figures in the centre of the room- ‘not that that’s something we can do. Apparently it’s the will of the Peanut? Following its decree? I don’t know, Jess, and even if I did, it’s too far out of my hands to do anything at all about it.’

‘Such is blaseball’, Jessica muttered, and knelt down beside York. ‘Hey, kid. What’re you playing?’ 

After several long seconds, York flipped his DS around and proudly showed her his screen. His hands were shaking a little as he held it. ‘Pokemon’, he declared, and turned it back to urgently mash buttons for a moment, then displayed his screen again. ‘It’s you’, he said decisively, and she peered at the small beast he was presenting her with on the screen. 

‘Cyndaquil, huh? Excellent choice. Very me’, she nodded, and he beamed at her. 

The red-numbered clock behind her started up a final-sounding beeping countdown. Startled, she snapped up straight and took a last look at the idol board. She’d never really liked the thing in the first place (the ranking system just seemed arbitrarily cruel, and it was just another way for fans to make an extra few coins and snatch a few more inches of control over their lives), but of course it was shaping out to be the harbinger of some unknown terror. Nothing in blaseball could just be some ordinary function she could get annoyed at in a regular capacity, it seemed.

Her name showed no signs of dropping. Whatever that meant.

Time seemed to slow as the clock hit the ten second count. The room was dead still in tense silence, all eyes on the clock, until Peanut Holloway in his awful amalgamated peanut body, broke and ran out the door. Better than nothing, Jess thought, and followed after him. 

As she stepped foot out the door, reality shifted, almost toppling her over. It was not a new sensation to her, and so she stomached the nausea and ignored the headache and turned down the volume on her hearing aid to lessen the grating whine. The sky was dark, now, and she kept stumbling like the ground wasn’t where she expected it to be. God, she was sick of this. 

She managed to lurch out to where Holloway stood to his full eight feet, beside the other two peanuts (a weird little guy who moved like a cartoon and an angelic mess of wings and eyes centered around a single, tiny peanut, both of whom she tended to avoid for completely different reasons), staring up at the sky. With a familiar, dawning horror, she turned her gaze up to where they looked, and saw the Peanut descend upon them, because who else.

Looking up at it directly made her headache worse. She couldn’t quite comprehend what it appeared as and couldn’t look away- her vision was full of blind spots and filled-in white against the pitch black sky, and when it spoke, it bypassed her ears and her turned-off hearing aid and got directly in her mind.

MCDANIELS, it said, in a sharp red tone that hurt her brain, and Jessica instinctively clutched her hand over her mouth. Reality started to slip again as she spun to face Nagomi, who was already kneeling on the ground, hugging York tightly. He had his eyes scrunched shut and his hands tight over his ears underneath her sharp embrace. Nagomi looked up at Jess and called something out to her (Take care of him, Jess thought she read), before she placed a last kiss on York’s forehead, let him go, and walked several decisive steps backwards.

One of the Peanut players seemed to be shouting something up to the sky. Like they could change anything. There was a dark flash in the corner of her eye and something seemed to hurtle at Nagomi, and Jess screamed and almost missed what the Peanut said next.

TELEPHONE.

The last thing she saw was York, wide eyed and sobbing, starting to run towards her before something slammed her hard into the grass and everything went dark.

She blinked, and blinked, trying to adjust to the light, but there was nothing to adjust to, no light from anywhere at all. She reached out, desperate and instinctive, and found she could touch every awful curving side of this- of whatever this was at once. The boundaries of her reality had shrunk to virtually nothing.

A second of pause, as her mind tried and tried and tried to parse what had happened, where she was, until trying burned and the fear she had felt outside roared into a shaking panic. She instinctively shook into a hundred violent escape attempts, punching at the rough walls until her knuckles felt ragged, screaming until her voice was gone. She threw her body like a hammer against the walls of this world over and over until she had exhausted every last bit of adrenaline-fueled energy she could muster.

Falling back against the curve of the wall, she remembered the Dial Tone, and gasped with sudden hope. She reached into the dark on her hip with the enthusiasm of denial that comes when you’re afraid past the point of thought, until her shaking, bloody hand found it and grasped it tight. This was it, she could call someone, they could- they could- 

Shaking her head, she blindly dialed desperate random numbers into the Dial Tone. It beeped the numbers back at her, paused, and nothing. She tried again, a different set of numbers- nothing.

She tried a hundred times to remember her brother’s number. She  _ knew  _ she could do it blind, and so she tried, and always there were those few golden seconds of relayed numbers in a non-response until her hope was inevitably shattered by an empty beep. She tried for hours, any phone numbers she thought she could remember, to just random strings of digits- all nothing. Finally, when her fingers cramped and she felt like she’d dialled every number on the planet, she collapsed, curling around the worthless bat and sobbing into the darkness. 

Days or hours or minutes later, she started to move, her prison rolled and heaved about. Inside, she was thrown against the edges and bruised past cognition. It was almost a relief. Any change was welcome to counter the empty hopelessness she clutched in the Dial Tone. She felt vindicated in her hatred of the idol board for this one, she thought, as her head was thrown back against what had been the floor a second ago.

It was so  _ small _ in there. The shape of this coffin was just under the right size in every dimension, so that even when it was still and she thought she had finally found some comfort, there was a wall pushing back against her and holding rest just out of her reach. Most days (at least she thought they were days) she spent awkwardly curled up the bottom half, trying not to think. 

She picked up the habit of talking nonsense into the dark as though her phone calls had gone through, like her brother could somehow hear her.

God, Sebastian. She missed him. She’d already cursed herself and apologised into the air a thousand times for not calling him before she’d left; she had assumed she’d only be a minute, taken her own brother for granted, and now she didn’t even know if she’d see him again. See  _ anyone _ again. Stupid to lay any trust at all in the commissioner. Stupid to- stop. Pause. Rewind. Don’t panic. 

She put her head in her hands, tried to take a slow breath, and ran through the theory she had constructed in her head. 

The one thing she was certain of was that this was the doing of the Peanut. It was the obvious conclusion from everything she had seen, and so she assumed it was the truth, just to have something to know. Nagomi, and whoever else- probably whichever one of the Peanut players had been over that red line- was probably in this same situation. York was safe, she told herself. Sebastian was nowhere near the idol board, so he was- he  _ is  _ safe too. They are both ok, and she would get out soon. That was her mantra, the thread holding her back from completely losing it. Soon. Soon, soon, soon. Then her world would tilt and roll again, be struck and topple over, slam her into the sides of it over and over again until she was scattered and bruised and crying, until would fall still. She would breath slowly and deliberately, gather her thoughts, and try to piece herself back into something whole. Every time it happened she felt like she had lost something more. She never could place what it had been. Little pieces of her identity battered beyond recognition and faded in the darkness.

The not knowing was the worst part. She had no frame of reference for reality. Perhaps she had never been claustrophobic, but the experience of being in this minuscule cave, without the faintest sign of light and no idea where she was or how she got there, terrified her in a way sharper than she’d ever felt before. One wrong shove too hard against the wall, one minute too long of complete darkness, and she tipped, sobbing, back under into mindless panic.

She didn’t know how long it had been. She knew she didn’t feel hungry and she couldn’t sleep (she’d tried), so this was some hellish pocket dimension that kept her alive forever, for whatever godforsaken reason-

There was a sudden, urgent flurry of tapping from above her. She hadn’t heard anything from outside the thing for the whole time she’d been in there (the volume on her hearing aids was turned up as high as possible, just in case) and so she froze in instant overload where she was lying, folded tightly, at the base of the shell.

The tapping- no, the pecking got louder, unbearably loud, and then, like the whim of a forgetful god, there was  _ light.  _ Jessica stood up as fast as her disused limbs could get her, and started pounding on the roof where the beam fell through, yelling, eyes shut from the sudden shaft of brightness and the wild hope it burned her with. 

A chunk of the roof gave in and she became frenzied, kicking and punching everywhere she could with a strength she thought she’d lost, until the entire side fell away and she collapsed onto the soft- softer than anything she’d ever felt before- grass of blaseball field. She could hear the crowd roaring at overwhelming volume, there were so many bodies crowded around her, it was so  _ bright _ . All she could process, the one image she remembered afterwards, was the broken shards of a huge, bloody peanut shell lying on the grass around her.

She must have passed out, because when she opened her eyes again, she was curled in the sheets of a bed in a room she didn’t recognise. The blanket was heavy on her dirty skin and a familiar panic kindled, but she was  _ fine  _ this time, she was out, she was free, right?

The walls felt like they were closing in on her, and the blanket became suffocating, regardless of her reassurances to herself that it was she was safe now. On a whim and for some semblance of familiarity, she snatched the Dial Tone in its holder from beside her bed as she stumbled out. She rattled the door handle frantically until it opened and tried to pretend like she wasn’t running through the maze of this hotel until she finally found a door that led outside. 

She slowed to a walk in the cool evening air, trying to breath slowly, calm herself down, until she stepped onto the grass of an unfamiliar blaseball field. The massive expanse of the starry sky above her gave her a lonely comfort. As she lay on the grass she looked up, ignoring the cold of the ground, and smiled. The noises of crickets and dormant birds provided a background noise she had become completely unused to. It was heavenly.

She lay there for a while until, suddenly, she remembered Sebastian. God, how could she forget? Immediately, she rolled over to the Dial Tone- beaten and scratched and bloody from its time in the shell, but functional, always functional- and dialled Sebastian’s number. He picked up immediately. She knew he would. 'Sebastian-'

'Jess?!' he said, the static that saturated his voice with his emotions making him almost indecipherable.

'Hi, Seb,' she whispered, her voice ragged. 'What’s up?'

'Jess- oh my God, Jess, I missed you. I’m so glad you’re out. It’s so good to hear you again' His voice caught on his words as he spoke, and he stifled a sob into a half incredulous, half elated laugh. 

'I’m sorry I didn’t call before. I should’ve-'

'Hey. None of that, dummy. You didn’t know what was going to happen. None of us did- none of us do, ever. I know you, so I’ll tell you now- don’t blame anything on yourself.'

'Tell me what happened while- while I was out?'

'Of course,' Seb said gently, and recounted the events of the time she’d been gone. He told her how Jaylen Hotdogfingers had been resurrected but had come back wrong, somehow, and was hitting people with blaseballs that seemed to push them out of reality slightly; they would glow blue during solar eclipses, and the rogue umpires seemed to go after them at every opportunity. He explained what little more they’d learned about the idol board, how Holloway was unaffected, how the Tacos had a plan. 

When he got through everything big that had happened, he got down to the small things. Jokes between his teammates, how he’d managed to shrink his uniform in the wash, what he’d had for dinner that night, little inconsequential anecdotes that did nothing but fill the quiet hours and make Jess smile as she stared up into the star-full darkness. He talked about anything until the static was gone from his voice and he was speaking almost clear. The first pink hints of sunrise started peeking over the stadium walls, and at last he fell silent.

'Hey, Seb?' Jessica said, after several minutes of quiet.

'Yeah?'

'Will you come down to- uh, wherever I am? I- I miss you.'

'You know how they are with non-siesta breaks, they didn’t even let you off the field when you were- uh. Look, I’ll try and get my teammates to cover for me. I heard the Pies figured out a way to do that for you now that you’re out, for a few days, at least. Oh, thank them for me, will you? I miss you too, Jessie.'

Jess tried to speak but all that came out was a choked staticy crackle. She nodded instead, like he could see her.

'Love you more than anything. I’ll see you soon, ok? Just this one more game and I’ll come down.'

She sniffled. 'Yeah. Love you too, Seb. Thank you so much.'

The Dial Tone clicked back onto its receiver. Somewhere in Dallas, the boy with the number pad on his cheek glared out the window at the darkened sun starting to rise. He started to pack a bag, and tried to ignore the bruise on his forehead and the way his skin glowed a foreboding blue.

—

Day 67, Season 7. Jessica stood back on the field, trying to act like she had never left, and focused as hard as she could on the game.

Sebastian stood on an almost identical field, miles and miles away, in the almost total darkness of a solar eclipse. At least the way he was glowing meant he could see a little. He knew the Umpire was staring at him. He didn’t dare look.

Jessica stepped up to bat, swung the Dial Tone, hit the ball, and ran. She pushed her aching muscles to something close to good performance until she felt like her body was alive again. A smile stretched across her face as she played. Back on the field, in her element- despite everything, she did love the game.

Sebastian, tired and impatient, swung. Hit the ball. Ran. Not fast enough- out. He inadvertently looked up, and met the blank stare of the Umpire’s mask. The two point of light behind it shone as only other source of light on the field, bright ember red.

Jess bounced on her feet at second base where she was waiting, wound up like a spring. Amidst cheers from the crowd, the Dial Tone rang on her hip, and she froze. The game was momentarily forgotten as both teams turned to look, all brows furrowed. It never rang while they were playing.

Sebastian stared the umpire resolutely in the eye, phone clutched tight to his ear, heat building in his chest.

Jessica picked up. 

'Jess-', Sebastian started, choking on the feeling of coals burning in his throat, and then-

Imagine that for your entire life, since the moment you were born, there was white noise playing in your head. It would become as much a part of you as your heartbeat, as the blood in your veins, as breathing, and you almost forgot it was there, until suddenly the noise just stopped, and-

_ We’re sorry; the number you called has been disconnected. _

Silence. The darkness swallowed the field. Sebastian was gone. 

  
  


—

  
  


Jessica started playing hard and fast and careless, pushing herself past the point of aching every day. She would run for hours after games, slept on the field every night, and spoke as little as she could manage. Every game against Jaylen Hotdogfingers, Jessica would stare them down every chance she got. The first time, Jaylen looked back. Their striking turquoise pupils held a mask of steely resolve against Jess’ mountainous rage, but after that first look, they avoided looking at her. Good, Jessica thought. What did they know about grief?

Their games against each other were rare, but Jess made a habit of watching from the stands as lives were burned out facing off against Jaylen and Jaylen looked everywhere but back at Jess. After one such game, no lives lost but one doomed, Jaylen approached her on the field. Everybody else filed off carefully past them. Jaylen slowly looked up and met Jessica’s eyes for the first time in months. ‘Jessica Telephone,’ they said, in their echoed, weary voice, keeping solid eye contact. ‘Will you grant me a moment to spend on talking to you?’

Jess didn’t say anything, and Jaylen nodded. ‘Alright. Look- apologies will do nothing, and I know that; I’ve tried a hundred times before, and it is always empty, and leaves everyone feeling worse for it. Instead of condolences that will help no one, then, I will tell you two things that might bring you some small reprieve. Firstly, I wish I were dead.’ They watched Jessica carefully as they said this, and when met with no reaction, continued. ‘Ironic, I know, and I suppose I still am, technically. Look-’ and they checked their pulse, well practiced hand on neck, ‘-nothing. Dead fool walking. Despite that, despite everything, I am here, and there seems to be nothing anyone can do about that. You can try- if you stabbed me in the heart or caved my head in with that bat of yours right now, believe me when I say nothing would change. Feel free, if it would make you feel any sort of catharsis, by the way.’ Their tone was far too earnest. Jessica kept quiet.

‘I get what the Garages were going for,’ they continued. ‘I wanted to kill the gods too, I played their tune and believed in it fully, but I have my limits. They didn’t know what they were doing when they brought me back, and I have been told it was a grand, rallying, unifying moment of defiance, but it was not worth this. My life is not worth this, not by a long shot. The Umpires speak of my debt to be paid, how my soul holds the weight of a thousand for the boundaries overstepped, for the rules broken. They said that it’s like the book all over again. We open the book, I am the first burned in penance, they bring me back, and now I must burn in kind. Full circle. 

I know, more than anything, that it all would be better if I had stayed dead, and with every life I take I wish I had. You know that I cannot stop, though. I-’ and they paused, and broke eye contact for a moment, and looked back, ‘-do not enjoy it, but I cannot stop. It is written, not in any book you know of, but it is not something that can be erased. They have made sure I know that.

Despite that, there is a lone, redeeming quality, to amend the price of my renewed existence; it is the second thing that I think you should know. There’s…  _ something  _ following me. Something vast, with a lot of power, and careless in how it plays. I believe it might be able to bring back your brother, and promise that I will do everything I can with what little influence I can twist to make sure that happens.

That’s all. Thank you for listening, Telephone. Know that I feel everything that you, and your brother’s team, and everyone I have ever stolen lives from feels. My divine punishment; I hurt for you, every second that I remain on this mortal plane. Good luck out there,’ they said, and turned to leave.

‘Wait,’ Jessica spoke, for the first time in weeks. ‘Hotdogfingers. Look, this- I can’t forgive you, and I know you know that, but- this is the way things are. You missed a lot, so maybe you don’t feel it as strong as the rest of us, but blaseball is- is fucking terrifying and heartbreaking regardless of what we feel. This isn’t on your shoulders. You don’t represent the gods who brought this on us, who your team is so set on taking down, okay?

Jaylen looked at her, head on a slight tilt, and Jessica could see in their slight, broken smile that they didn’t- couldn’t take it to heart, not half because they no longer had one. ‘See you on the field, Telephone,’ they said with finality, and left.

After that, Jess stopped her glaring, and nodded to Jaylen every game they faced each other. She also started speaking to her teammates again, bit by bit. Just comments and compliments on their play, here and there. They tried to act as normal about it as they could. She appreciated it. 

The final game of Season 7 wrapped up, and Jessica sprinted through a different set of changing rooms on a different path, but this time with a goal in mind. No-one stopped her this time, just watched as she ran. 

There was no car waiting for her in the parking lot, and she beelined to her own vehicle and screeched out onto the highway alone. She wasn’t sure where she was going, but that in itself was the best hope of direction that she had, for the place she hoped she was going. Ten miles in, her eye caught the familiar black of one of the Commissioner’s vehicles, and she switched lanes to tail it as they both barrelled down the highway. She tuned out her surroundings as she exhilarated and focused solely on the car, muttering ‘Come on, come on, come on,’ as she sped down the road. Somehow, quite possibly through sheer, wild, willpower, it worked. The black car took a sudden turn and she spun the wheel to follow it, parking abruptly by the pavement it pulled up to as someone got out the door and strode inside. Jess killed the engine and ran after them into that same office building once again.

The Taco pitchers were sat huddled together in a corner. She’d heard about their plan, their sacrifice (snackrifice?) , pieced together from overheard conversations and snippets of radio chatter over the past few weeks. They looked up at her as she marched over, and she saw Wyatt Pothos glance at the wildly shifting idol board, where Jessica’s name was falling towards the static red line as the names of the pitchers steadily crept up.

‘Tacos,’ Jessica greeted them curtly, nodding awkwardly at them all before addressing Wyatt Pothos. She had to pick someone and Pothos seemed like a leader, judging by her well defined arms and cute haircut. Jess coughed self-consciously. She wished she was better at this sort of thing ‘Uh… nothing can really warn or prepare you for being shelled, and I’m sorry I can’t help you with my experience. Just- bring stuff with you, I guess, anything at all, and know that you have my deepest respect for doing this willingly. Good luck.’ 

‘Thanks, Jess,’ Pothos grinned, and threw a wink her way before turning back to the Tacos. Jessica blushed despite herself, and left the Tacos’ pitchers to their bold chatter, seeming to have barely listened to her awkward pep talk. Brave idiots, she thought to herself. Brave and selfless past the point of thought, or perhaps thought out and logical to the point where they had to ignore reason to keep going. She hoped their resolve would do them well when the Peanut got them.

One mental checkbox ticked, she turned to find York. That spot on the floor where he had sat before was empty, and she almost felt relieved for a moment as the lobby was empty of his brightly dyed orange hair. It lasted until she glanced out the window and saw him standing outside on the field with Polkadot Patterson, standing almost half their size against them. The two looked like they might be arguing. 

Jessica sighed and strode out the door over to them. Polkadot looked up at her before she approached, long brown hair almost like a cape down their back. Their whole being seemed to almost glow and dissipate around the edges if you looked for too long. They’d just been a normal pitcher, once, like the rest of them, but blaseball taken them and made them far, far removed from how they’d started, further than most other players Jess had met, bar perhaps Jaylen. Human barely worked as a descriptor anymore for this ethereal vessel of gods.

‘Tell the little one to go home, Telephone,’ Polkadot decreed, observing her with an intensity that made her turn to York for refuge.

He was looking back up at her, staring her in the eye with an equally determined look, resolute in all the boundless power of a stubborn eight-year-old. ‘’M staying. I think the Moist Talkers would be sad if they got put in a shell, and I have my DS so I won’t get sad or bored.’ He brandished the device for evidence.

With a glance back into the lobby, Jessica saw the idol board moving too fast to keep track of. The clock, just in her sight, was ticking into its final minutes. God damn it. ‘York,’ she said, and crouched down to his level, putting her hands on his shoulders. He was shaking. ‘You’re very, very brave, and I am sure the Moist Talkers will be very thankful for your idea, but… look. Nagomi told me to keep you safe, and I haven’t been doing a very good job of that lately. I am going to try harder, and I am going to start with this. I cannot let you go through what I did.’ York opened his mouth to protest, but Jess pressed on. ‘You can’t break your mom’s heart like that, alright?’

Tears welled in his eyes, feeble resolve broken. He nodded.

Polkadot, still standing tall above him, spoke down in their careful, measured tone.

‘While I am still able, I will not let the Peanut get you, little one. I can’t promise anything once it takes me, but for this season, you are safe.’

York crashed into them in a hug. They stood uncomfortably still for a moment, then gently reached down and patted his mess of curly hair.

The countdown inside the lobby hit zero with a final beep. The shift in reality hit like a hammer, knocking both Jess and York onto the grass. Time’s up. Patterson nodded at Jessica and said, quiet but with a strength that kept them heard, ‘Take him inside. You will be safe as well.’ Jessica held eye contact with them for a last moment, trying to fit a world’s worth of thanks into a single look, before she scooped up York in her arms and ran back into the lobby. Just inside the door, she knelt and held him like Nagomi had before, humming ringtones in his ears and pretending not to hear the mocking tones of the peanut cutting through her mind.

As soon as it was quiet again, York wriggled out of her arms and ran back outside, rubbing his eyes. Jess carefully followed him. 

Five giant peanut shells stood where the Tacos had been, like standing stones in a resolute circle. Inside of the circle stood some sort of machine- an open-topped box and a tube on a tripod, laden with blaseballs, like some sort of pitching machine. A snarky consolation gift from the Peanut, maybe. She glared at it. 

Two other shells stood alone, and York had set off directly to the taller shell, standing in silenced defiance at the front of the crowd. Jessica stood back and let him run up to where Patterson had been- was. She watched as he gently placed his hands on the outside of the shell. He was saying something, but she looked away so she couldn’t read it. This moment was not for her.

A few minutes later, York walked back to her across the grass, jaw set. ‘They have my DS in my pocket with Plokemon on it so they won’t be lonely. I put it there when I hugged them. I don’t need it any more,’ he told her, determined. His face was streaked with tears but quietly calm, empty of the anger that she saw and expected in every other player’s face after a day like this. Incredible, she thought. To be so young and to live through all that loss and horror, season after season, year after year, and yet hold no rage. She admired the Garages with their bold, shouting rebellion, and the Tacos with their defiant, selfless sacrifice, but just as much as that she admired York. He lost his stepmom and teammates and friends and he knew far better than any eight-year-old should that his life and safety was in danger every time he played, but still he played, and smiled, and gave, and loved unconditionally. A quiet, steadfast resistance of his own, standing as tall as he could with the mourning piled on his small shoulders. Jessica wished with all her heart she could forgive like he could.

\--

The next season passed without anything more than the usual world-changing terror. The Monitor, some squid in the sky too large to comprehend that blotted out all light and substituted it with the same glow she saw on Jaylen, appeared. The Peanut appeared to have been scared off by the Monitor and its lighthearted desire to consume all… eggs. Given the blurred line between egg and peanut, Jessica felt a creeping dread that those shelled might be in danger, but she tried not to think about it. She focused on the fact that the Peanut was scared of the Monitor. This was good. 

This careful trust of the monitor reinforced when the Monitor introduced the Hall of Flame, true to Jaylen Hotdogfingers’ promise. When Jess saw her brother’s name on it, firmly in the top 10, she cried for the first time in months, filled with baseless but overwhelming hope. The next time she saw Jaylen, she abandoned all game protocol to abandon her base and run to hug her fiercely. 

‘I hope with everything left in me that it turns out to be good for him’, Jaylen whispered in her ear, before the glare of the umpires got too hot and Jess had to run back into position.

The pitching machine was instated. At first, the cold, lone, inhuman silhouette on the field opposing her felt like a direct blow from the peanut, a sneer at the Taco’s sacrifice, but bit by bit she warmed to it. After every game she played against it, she would see Zion Aliciakeyes, with tools in hand, run up to its side. The next game the Pitching Machine would have the skeleton of an arm, and then legs, and always plastered in more and more stickers, until the figure that stood opposite her was brightly coloured and considerably human-shaped, if you could look past the odd angles and remnants of its origin. After several months, when Jess nodded to it in passing, it smiled at her. 

Season 8, Day 99. There was that car waiting for her in the parking lot again. This time her teammates piled in to hug her tight before she ran through the door. Her name was solid at the top of the idol board again, far beyond saving above the red line. They knew that wishing her luck was pointless. 

The black car was waiting. She climbed in. The ride was quiet, with the radio turned off and a silent, glaring driver. Everyone in the vehicle- everybody in the world knew what was going to happen to her this time.

She arrived at that building for the third time. Inside, she saw the Pitching Machine standing alone, stoic in the centre of the room. Sure, she thought. There were hours left on the clock and no one else around; she might as well actually get to know the stark figure she’d been casually observing for the whole season. 

It looked over at her as she approached, and Jessica abruptly realised she had no idea what to talk to it about. She just stood in awkward silence and looked it over, half for a lack of conversation topics, half in the plain interest of getting to see it up close for the first time. She saw the remnants of what it had originally been; there was the tripod stand as one of its legs, the box full of blaseballs on its back, the one curved tube arm that cut into a half-pipe, but otherwise than that it looked almost unrecognizable as the machine it had started as. It was bright and colourful in both stickers and metal, a cobbled-together patchwork of personality. Its head looked like it had had the most care put into it, with joints and layers of metal carefully put together to make something unmistakably a human face. 

Ah. She was staring. 

'Like what you see?' the Pitching Machine said as she blinked, and laughed like forks in a blender.

'Do  _ you _ like it?' Jessica replied, mannerless from curiosity.

'It’s fantastic,' it said, and its tinny voice was genuine.

'What does it feel like?'

'Ah, I don’t feel like that. No nerves. Emotionally, though, it’s the best I’ve ever been. Hey- check this out,' it grinned, and flipped open a compartment on its arm. There was blood running through neat tubes woven amongst the rainbow of wires.

'I heard about that,' Jessica marvelled, peering in half disgust at its arm. 'I wondered where the blood went, but that makes sense. Uh… why do you have it?'

'At first it was just a kind of experiment, see what happened, see if it would up my star rating or anything, but I feel so  _ alive.  _ Yeah, yeah, I don’t feel and I guess I’m not technically alive, but it’s one thing to fight for your team, and another to bleed for them. I’m still wholly machine, but I am a machine in more of the way you are, now. Right?' it said, with a tap on the speaker-freckles on Jess’ cheeks and a nod to her hearing aid. 'You, arguably, are a machine with blood, as am I; both in the fact that you have electricity aiding you, and in your body being a complex biological machine, or whatever.'

'...I guess so,' Jess said. 'Could you always- were you always sentient?'

'Yep', it said, with a flat smile. 'Couldn’t see or anything, at first. I’m not sure what it was that inspired Zion to give me eyes and speakers and a Twitter account, but fuck I’m glad she did. Not being able to hear or speak but still being sentient-'

'Yeah,' Jess interjected. 'I know. Believe me.'

'Right. Now we’re both set to be put back like that, huh?'

'At least we’re prepared, this time.'

'Sure. That’ll help.'

They were both lying, and they knew it, but what else can you do but lie with something that big hanging over your head?

'Oh,' Jess said, after a long moment of quiet, 'Is York here?'

The Pitching Machine scanned around for a few hope-filled seconds until it pointed out into the field, at the small figure sitting on the grass in the sun. 'Over there,' it said. 'Can I come with you? I want to meet him.' 

Jess nodded, and the two walked out the doors. They approached York, and Jess opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, York sprang up from the grass and hugged her, pulling her down to sit by him. 'I’m sorry,' he said. ' I heard about you sleeping on the grass and how you , I don’t want you to go back.'

Caught off guard, Jess burst into tears, suddenly forced to face up with the inevitable. Wordless, she just sat there on the grass and hugged York tight and cried, until his shirt was soaked with tears and she had stopped shaking quite so much. 

‘I’m scared for you,’ she said, when she could piece herself together enough to speak.

‘I’ll be ok,’ he said, and she could see that he believed it fully. Maybe that was enough to make it true.

The Pitching Machine, who had been standing a little ways back from them, approached.

‘Why do you stick around?’ it asked, and both Jess and York looked up at it in confusion. ‘Why don’t you just leave? Stop playing? Go live in peace with your friends?’

‘Why don’t you?’ York retorted, and the Pitching Machine blinked, like it hadn’t thought of that before. 

‘This is what I was built for. I’m the Pitching Machine, that’s my  _ name _ , I- what else could I do?’

‘Exactly,’ Jess said. ‘It’s the same for us.’

‘You weren’t brought into this world for this sole purpose, though, right?’

‘I am eight,’ York said, holding up 8 fingers, ‘and I play blaseball.’ There was a pause.

‘That’s all?’

York shrugged. Jess shook her head at the Pitching Machine. 

‘I had a childhood, I think, and I have- I had my brother. We grew up together, but I couldn’t tell you how. I just know that we started playing blaseball in the Blittle League because I love it and Sebastian went where I went, and I don’t think I could stop now if I tried. Yeah, it’s probably all there even is anymore, and I would likely face the wrath of the gods for leaving, but I’m in it for the game, at the end of the day. I’ve lost too many people, at this point- backing out would be spitting on their memory.’

‘I play for my friends, and because I am Our Lady’s, and because it’s fun,’ York said simply. ‘Are you going to quit?’

The Pitching Machine ran its hand through its wiry hair. ‘No. You’re right. We’re in it now, and I don’t want to think about what it means if I try to leave and I can’t. I’ll deal with my life and identity being born and built around this hell game later, I guess. Plenty of time for thinking in that shell.’

At that, Jess instinctively looked up at the sky, like the Peanut might have appeared without her noticing. 

‘Don’t,’ York said, bapping her on the shoulder. ‘Just sit on the grass with us. It’s not yet.’

So they sat, the three of them, in the heat of the sun, and just listened to each other as the Pitching Machine talked about its plans for upgrades on its body in the future like it has one, and York rambles about his Plokemon speedrun like it won’t be the only thing he has left in a few hours, and Jess tells them fond childhood memories of Sebastian like he isn’t dead.

When the sky shifts to black this time, none of them rise from where they’re sat in their little triangle. Jess turned off her hearing aid, because she might as well try and get used to the silence earlier. York gave her a double thumbs up and carefully, practiced but clumsy, signed ‘It’ll be ok. Promise.’ The last thing she saw was the Pitching Machine looking at York with half pity, half wonder. I know the feeling, Jess thought, before she felt that awful gut-punch once again as reality shifted and she is slammed into the complete, familiar darkness of the peanut shell.

It’s immediately suffocating with how she knew, this time, that nothing she does will change the fact that she is stuck here. She curled up tight and tried, and failed, to keep calm. She focused on her breath, and when that grew ragged and panicked she just clutched her hand over her mouth and shut her eyes tight, balled up as small as she can in the bottom of the peanut.

Time, years or minutes has passed in an awful blur and suddenly she’s out, already running even though she is not, ready to play despite how hard she tries to keel over, and something is terribly wrong. The sky is dark and the Dial Tone is clutched in her hands with a strength she has never known and she’s up to bat and she’s facing Jaylen Hotdogfingers. Jaylen looked terrified, desperate glances thrown around the field like they don’t know what’s happening. Jessica tried to call out to her but her face isn’t her own anymore and her mouth won’t open. She pushed so hard to move but she can only stand and feel her own hand as it turns up the volume on the hearing aid as high as it goes, and watched as Jaylen pauses, shaking, then winds up to throw.

‘Ring ring,’ Jess called out to them, in a mocking voice that is not her own and that hurt her head with how loudly she hears it. She had never thought she might feel what it is like to really  _ be  _ the telephone but holy fuck this is the worst thing she’s ever felt as her vocal cords are pulled against her will and she swung and she runs and it all feels so  _ wrong. _

The Pitching Machine stepped up to bat. Its body is not built for this. It is clutching an unwieldy wooden bat in its wrong and only hand, and it swung in a way that looks painful to watch. Its joints screeched and its carefully placed, handcrafted metal screamed as it missed the ball. It reeled backwards in a flurry of torn stickers but was pulled up to try again. Jess heard someone crying from the Shoe Thieves. She cannot turn her head to look. She felt like she’s crumbling.

York. York is out, he’s free, he’s two feet taller and decidedly teenaged, but Jess can feel and notice nothing but deep, twisting horror as he steps up to bat with his arms shaking. The Vibe Check, his faithful gunblade, is clutched tight in his hands, looking too small for him now, and he is shaking but he can do nothing but  _ swing  _ and  _ hit  _ and  _ run _ . Jaylen staggers like the contact with the ball was a direct blow to their chest. Jess looks at York and he is looking directly back at her but there is no recognition in his eyes and his pupils are blank and scarlet and shaking. He’s barely breathing.

This is worse than being shelled, this yanking and tugging and puppet-master pushing around the field. Every point and run hit the Shoe Thieves and bloodied their noses and forced them to play with limps and twisted ankles and dislocated shoulders. The Pods, this awful imitation of a team that Jess has been twisted onto, takes the same hits with every success of the Shoe Thieves but a broken leg is no concern if you are not the one steering your body. All that it means is that every step you are pushed to take is a stabbing pain that in itself is a reprieve. She cannot scream. It hurts so much. It’s better this way.

The sky is dark, there is no count of how many innings they have run but it feels like an ending, and Jessica is up to bat once more. She swings. The bat connects with the ball with a harsh crack, and she runs. The Shoe Thieves are barely standing, and every step she takes they crumple more. They don’t even run for the ball, all their energy focused into keeping each other propped up. They just watch and wince and bleed as she runs and runs and runs.

First base. Gunther tumbles from his mech. Jess can feel the peanut over her, gloating, she can feel her rolled ankle burning as she sprints, she can feel the eyes of everyone in the world on her.

Second base. Blood Hamburger is lying in a pool of more blood than one person should contain. The pain in her body does nothing to stop its path. She ekes out a glance back to the Pods as she keeps running. The Pitching Machine has collapsed like a discarded puppet. York- York is smiling, wide and smug and blank, eyes on her as she runs.

Third base. Cornelius Games is knocked to his knees, and is glaring at her as she runs. He is bruised and shaky, suit spattered with blood but chin held high. They maintain eye contact until Jess’s head is snapped back with force to stare at the path ahead. She wishes she could stop, wishes she could be doing anything else other than delivering this killing blow for that fucking peanut.

Home run. 

She’s done it. There is a long, slow golf clap echoing around the stadium and a mix of pained moans and screaming in place of cheers, the awful cacophony of noises painful to her ears. Her body is released, finally permitted reprieve with victory. Her muscles give out, exhausted, and she topples. The rest of the Pods fall with her. She can’t bring herself to look at the Shoe Thieves.

She lands, hard, on the ground, and she is back in the darkness, and instinctively she almost starts to sob until a warm body crashed into her and she realises that this time, she has space, and this time she is not alone. Someone is hugging her, and she hears a hoarse voice harsh in her ear before she hastily reduces the volume on her hearing aid back to normal. 

‘Jess, I’m sorry.’

‘...York??’

‘Yeah. Hi.’

‘...What- what happened to your voice?’

He laughed weakly. ‘Teened up. I think I’m 16 now, maybe?’

‘How?’

‘The Peanut cut me off from Our Lady Friday’s influence, or something like that. Feeling weird.’

‘I can imagine. Hey- you apologized. Don’t.’

York stuttered back into the reality of what happened to them, and sighed. ‘No, I’m sorry that you have to go through this again. I’m sorry that you had to run that home run.’

‘You’re saying that like it’s on you. It’s not.’

‘Yeah, but I know what a smile feels like, even if it’s not me pulling it.’

‘You-  _ I  _ should be sorry, you’re just a ki- you’re still so young. None of this should be on you.’

He shook his head against her shoulder. 'None of this should be on any of us.’

‘Right. It’s all so arbitrary. Our only crimes were being good at blaseball and being idolised for it. No fuckking reason to be puppeted like this at all. Sorry. Language.’

‘I’m a teenager,’ he said indignantly. ‘Look: fuck.’

There was a host of gasps from the crowd of other people in this textured locker room, and, despite everything, Jess managed to laugh. 

She had forgotten about Nagomi, everything considered, until she blinked and time had passed and she was back on that same dark, expansive field. She started up a sprint to a rhythm too fast, already hopeless in a body taken from her for a second time. The Baltimore Crabs were facing her, resolute and glaring, determined with all the strength they had put so much into building. Wyatt Quitter was up to bat for the pods, and they hit. The Crabs went down in an echo of the Shoe Thieves, crumpled like paper. At least it was short, Jess thought, and waited for the darkness to hit once again. She felt almost bemused, numb to the Crabs’ ruination, until her eye met Nagomi’s.

Something had happened to her. Jess had heard about carcinization, she had seen the Crab’s hardened red skin with their pincers and protruding limbs unnatural from human bodies, but Nagomi was borderline unrecognizable. The other crabs had fallen but Nagomi’s body would not let her, propping her up by the growth bigger than her that crept from her back and left side. She was almost kneeling on the ground, pulled between gravity and the carcinized scaffolding. Her head twisted away from Jess to look at someone- oh, god, York.

He didn’t pause as he strode up to Nagomi, gunblade in hand, and started to beat erratically at her mess of crab limbs. She tensed but made no move to stop him, eyes fixated on his smiling face. Jess could hear the cracking of crab shells from across the field, and could only watch as York’s lanky frame took out the limbs and claws and shell that kept Nagomi up, one by one, until she was beaten into the ground and the final crab left standing was down. 

‘GOODBYE MCDANIELS,’ York said in a voice that didn't fit in his lungs, and stabbed the gunblade directly through her largest claw and into the ground, tethering her. ‘ENJOY ASCENSION.’

He walked back to the stands, and Jess thought maybe, finally, they could go, but reality slipped one to the left and landed so heavily that for a moment she was free again. The sky was illuminated with a low blue glow, and there was another team standing where the Crabs had been, opposing the Pods. She looked up, saw the players in blue and black outfits out of the flame, and she looked closer, and saw her brother. He looked disoriented and tired, and was standing in ranks with a dozen other people- Landry Violence, Dominic Marijuana- the dead. The highest ranks of the hall and, amongst them unexpectedly but in a way that seemed right, Jaylen Hotdogfingers. 

The game began, and they started to play, because what else could they do?

It was a messy, broken match. Weather changed again and again and again, and Jaylen flickered beside her but she couldn’t turn to look. Jaylen was shouting something. All Jess could catch over the pounding of rain or the screaming flurry of birds or the mind-splitting feedback screech was ‘I’m sorry,’ and ‘see him one last time’.

So she tried, every run, spending every inch of free will she could drag from her body to turn to Sebastian. He was always looking back at her, smiling brightly despite how the runs they scored made him bleed dark blue and how he limped across the field and how the apocalyptic terror of the game permeated every move they made. 

And then-

On a run from second base, Sebastian veered off course and sprinted directly over to her, and crashed into her in a tight hug. Her body felt like iron shackles around her and she couldn’t hug him back, just stand there unmoving as hot tears rolled down her face. It had been years. She missed him so much. 

He pulled back and held her by the shoulders, looking carefully into her eyes. ‘I know you’re in there,’ he shouted over the din, ‘and I know you can hear me. I don't know what’s happening, no one ever has nor will, but regardless of how this turns out, I love you and you will be ok, alright? You have to remember that. I’ve,’ and he chuckled for a moment, looking amicably up at the vast tentacles wreathing the edges of the sky, ‘had a lot of time to think lately. Lot of time to decide what to say to you when I saw you again, so- listen. Of all the uncertainty in blaseball, of all the things we can’t know or change, and the reigns of terror we live and play under, you cannot start to think that it is worthless and empty. Talk to people, keep talking to them, keep loving them, you'll see,’ and he opened his mouth to say more, but the shadow of the solar eclipse that had been creeping across the field and covering what was not the sun reached Sebastian, and he froze. His eyes stayed solidly on Jess as he let her go and took several, decisive steps backwards. ‘I love you, Jess,’ he said, and took a long, deep breath, and kept smiling, and- 

a brilliant flash lit up the field for a last moment. Everyone turned to watch Jess Telephone, stumble backwards as she screamed for a single moment, before she was pulled back up into a rigid stance, bat gripped tightly. 

When the game was lost and the crunch of the Peanut’s death knoll echoed through the stadium, Jessica just stumbled and fell, and kept falling. The feelings of relief and renewed loss and hope and hopelessness were more than she could handle, so she just fell, and fell, and fell, senseless and exhausted. She hadn’t known the stadium had been so high up, and she didn’t know where it had gone that she was falling now, but she just let herself tumble through the air and cold clouds and biting air until she was numb and didn’t need to wonder anymore.

When she landed, with enough force to crack the ground around her and knock all the air from her lungs, she just lay there for a day. She was unthinking and overwhelmed, her only thought a faint curiosity as to whether her bones had been broken by the fall, until something satin-soft touched her shoulder. On instinct, she rolled over and looked up. 

There was a creature she could only describe as looking like a toy she’d had when she was a child, but taller and softer and breathing gently, tilting their head at her. A tall, broad woman with a crown of horns on her head knelt down by the creature over Jess, and extended a large hand to help her up. 

The Peanut was dead, the Breath Mints informed her. It was the era of Peace and Prosperity, and it was a Siesta. Jessica Telephone would not be alone.

**Author's Note:**

> my english teacher is kindly letting me submit this for my final project in her class lmaoo so if you have any major writing critique lmk?? i guess??  
> anyway! thank you for reading sorry it’s so relentlessly angsty. i am skelebells pretty much everywhere if u would like to tell me my grammar needs improvement


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